Recently released bodycam videos show Rochester cops spraying a 9-year-old girl in upstate New York.
Footage from one video shot during a family dispute on Friday shows the upset young man running away from police and then falling to the snow-covered ground while a police officer tries to bring her back.
“I want my dad,” the girl shouted in a second video. “I’m not going anywhere. I want my dad … I never get in a car until I see my dad. ‘
“Stop,” said an officer.
“Wait, I can just get the snow off me,” she shouts. “I want my dad. Wait, I just want to see my dad, please. For the last time…. I claim. ”
“Stop or you will get hurt,” a policeman responded at one point during the long ordeal.
A female officer is heard telling the girl that she will find her father, but asks her to get in the police car to stay warm – only to make the girl scream again.
“Just spray her at this point,” one policeman finally says and is seen spraying the girl.
“Please wipe my eyes,” the girl shouted. “Please wipe my eyes.”
The footage was released Sunday after a city press conference, during which Rochester deputy police chief Andre Anderson said the girl was suicidal.
“She has indicated that she wants to kill herself and that she wants to kill her mother,” he said in a report in the Democrat & Chronicle.
Nine police vehicles responded to the call, police said.
The mother of the girl, who has also not been identified, is seen in the footage arguing with her daughter, who becomes increasingly excited as her mother spoils her.
The woman is also seen cursing at passing motorists.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’s okay for a 9-year-old,” Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan, police chief, said Sunday. “It’s not.”
“I do not see it as who we are as a department,” the principal said. “And we’re going to do the work we have to do to make sure such things don’t happen.”
Lovely Warren, mayor of Rochester, said she was upset by the video.
“I am very concerned about how this young girl has been treated by our police department,” Warren told the news conference. “From the video, it’s clear we need to do more to support our children and families.”